A last minute road trip turned the group onto the Sheringham Lighthouse, we headed out Sooke way and got as far as Shirley and anyone who knows “Shirley Delicious” knows a must stop place on a road trip. We stopped in and on the wall was a TC article found online at http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/sheringham-point-lighthouse-deemed-heritage-site-becoming-park-1.1962060, reading the article we had to check it out when we saw: “Sheringham Point Lighthouse, reportedly home to the ghostly presence of one of its last keepers, has been declared a heritage lighthouse and could soon be the centerpiece of a new park.” It was a 2015 article but the place is still undergoing some major Work and Ethan our 5 year old made us nervous as the sheer cliff drop offs and poor railings gave us pause.

Still, we want to find out more about the ghost reports and on the walk down to the lighthouse we think we found the grounds were the lighthouse keepers house was located now a vacant area off one of the trails, the path down to the lighthouse had some evidence that it was a cultivated driveway with a fruit tree and hazel nut trees so an interesting location and we want to hear more about the haunting.

“Cammie” Lake monster sightings are on the rise as Cameron Lake on Vancouver Island and it started a discussion about the whole lake monster phenomenon.

We here at V.I.P.S. are forming a hypothesis that might explain some sightings. The wake that is seen as they surface and dive, the bumps that are seen in a row.

Type of root systems that can be rotting in lake beds

Rotting Stumps and/or underwater root systems like lily pads which can become very large and undulating. See in the image a possible root system. It appears to have scales like that of a lizard or serpent. and it branches off, imagine that rolling on the surface of the water and a part rising out of the water as it does so. What could be a pretty compelling monster sighting.

As the fleshy root rots. It causes gas build up in the root itself that would cause it to rise to the surface. Gas escaping from the root propels it across the surface. Due to its undulating nature it forms the humps that are synonymous with a lake monster sighting. Another theory of the propulsion could be fish, a large fish would swim into the root as it tried to bite parts off it, this could also account for direction changes, splashing and rolling. You can see that happen when you throw bread in a lake with Carp. They swim at the bread as they try to bite pieces off propelling it across the water.

As gas escapes water enters the spaces and the root sinks. Movement in a monster sighting could be high pressure gas release causing the same effect you would get with a high pressure hose or a rolling effect of the root system possible causing protrusions from the lake surface, a head coming up our of the water and then going under again.

V.I.P.S would love ‘Cammie’ to be real and we not discounting it. We do like to promote ‘open mindedness’ and so are a putting it out there an an alternative idea for discussion, something to keep in mind when watching a youtube video sighting. We are interested in your lake monster encounters and thoughts on this topic, keep it constructive.

A little further digging turned up a 2008 story by Dave Obee in the TV about the haunting and a cartoon from personal friend Adrian Raeside :

Ghost of slain woman said to haunt Victoria Golf Club

Dozens of sightings have been reported

Times Colonist

26 Oct 2008

DAVE OBEE

She is still with us, they say, stopping traffic with her haunting stares. Doris Charnock Thomson Gravlin was just 30 years old when she suddenly disappeared in September 1936, along with her estranged husband Victor. A few days later her body was found. She had been killed, suffocated to death on a golf course.

But, if you believe in ghosts, Doris has been seen many times since then, on or about the Victoria Golf Club links where she died.

Victor’s body was found in the water next to the golf course almost a month after his wife’s body was discovered. Unlike his wife, he is really gone.

It is only fitting to note, as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the British Colonist, that our newspaper was part of the story. Victor Raymond Gravlin had worked as the sport editor at the Daily Colonist for about 10 years. He left the newspaper in 1934, two years before he and his wife died.

Doris Gravlin was born Doris Charnock on Sept. 13, 1906, in Manor House, Blackburn, Lancashire, England. Her parents were Walter Charnock and his wife Charlotte.

When Doris was just nine years old, in the spring of 1916, Walter Gravlin died. Charlotte had a married sister living in Victoria, so on Dec. 9, she and Doris boarded the Northland in Liverpool, heading for Halifax. They arrived there on Dec. 18, 1916, then set out for Victoria by train.

How long they stayed in Victoria is not known. By April 1918 they were living in Vancouver. On April 12, Charlotte Charnock married a motor mechanic, Robert Thomson, at the home they shared on Arbutus Street in Vancouver.

Soon after that they moved to Victoria, and Charlotte resumed her career as a nurse.

Doris was working as a sales clerk when she met Victor Gravlin, the man who would become her husband. They were married in Victoria’s Temple Hall on March 8, 1929.

Victor had been born in Victoria on Oct. 23, 1899, the son of Herbert Thomas Gravlin, who worked as a paper hanger — interior decorator, basically — and the former Elizabeth Kenny.

He had two sisters and three brothers.

Victor was active in sports, which led to work as a sports writer.

At first, everything seemed to be going well for Victor and Doris, and their son Walter was born in Victoria on Dec. 23, 1930.

In 1934, however, Victor “was taken ill,” accordingly to the newspapers of the day. He spent several months in hospital and never regained the robust health that he had previously enjoyed.

At about the same time, Doris and little Walter moved in with her mother and stepfather, Charlotte and Robert Thomson.

Doris started working as a private nurse.

When he got out of hospital, Victor went to live with his parents on Oak Bay Avenue.

On the evening of Tuesday, Sept. 22, 1936, Doris left her place of employment, an apartment on Beach Drive in Oak Bay.

About the same time, Victor left the home of his parents.

The following Sunday, photographs of both Doris and Victor appeared in the Colonist under the headline “Missing since Tuesday.”

“Victor Gravlin and his wife, Doris Gravlin, missing from their respective homes since last Tuesday, are being sought throughout Greater Victoria,” the newspaper said.

The Colonist described Victor as weighing about 135 pounds with medium build. He had a nervous temperament, the paper said. Doris was described as having auburn hair and large brown eyes, and was wearing a knitted dress, blue coat with silver buttons, and a grey hat.

Late in the afternoon that day, golf caddy John Johnson, who had been searching for a lost ball, found the body of Doris. It had been covered with brush in a secluded area of the course.

Police said they were still looking for Victor. There had been reports, they said, that Doris and Victor had been seen together on Foul Bay Road near Runnymede Avenue at about 8:45 p.m. Tuesday, walking southward. There were also reports that a scream had been heard at about 9 on Tuesday, with the sound coming from the golf course.

Doris was missing her shoes, her hat and her coat. Police scoured the golf course looking for evidence, enlisting a corps of Boy Scouts to help. They tried bloodhounds as well, but the passage of time had left much of the trail cold.

A coroner’s jury was assembled, with members James Macrimmon, Edwin Brown, George Burnell, James Adamson, Edward Wilkinson and Michael Heppell. The jury determined that Doris had been strangled to death by “person or persons unknown.”

Apparently Doris had been beaten before being strangled. Some bruises on her body had apparently been caused when her body was dragged to its hiding spot.

Oak Bay police issued a warrant for Victor, naming him as a suspect in his wife’s death. That meant, the Colonist said, that police probably believed Victor was still alive. The newspaper also suggested that Victor might have left the city disguised as a woman. That would have helped explain the Doris’s missing hat and coat.

Police distributed several hundred circulars noting that Victor Gravlin was wanted for murder, but in the days that followed, they had no luck finding him.

On Sunday, Oct. 26, four weeks to the day after the discovery of Doris’s body, a local man using a boat to look for golf balls found Victor’s body in the water next to the golf course.

Norman Le Poidevan contacted police, who used the man’s boat to bring the body ashore.

Victor’s body was fully clothed. In his coat pockets, police found Doris’s shoes. That closed the case. Walter, the son of Victor and Doris, stayed with Doris’s mother Charlotte and her husband Robert Thomson. The Thomsons ran a sanitarium on Montrose Avenue, then a health centre on Glanford Road in the Royal Oak district.

Little Walter Gravlin took the name Robin Charnock Thomson. In 1949 he went to Sandhurst Military College in England, and never returned to Canada. Before he died in October 1994, he was in charge of public transport in the Midlands.

On Oct. 1, 1936, Doris’s body was shipped to Seattle for cremation, something not yet possible on Vancouver Island. Ten years later her ashes were interred in an area of Royal Oak Burial Park reserved for cremated remains.

She is at rest there, in theory at least. In the years since her passing there have been dozens of sightings of a ghost next to the golf course. It’s believed the ghost is Doris, although another thought is that it might be Elizabeth Gravlin, still upset that her son Victor was blamed for the death of Doris.